It seems that telling the truth is not the norm anymore. Whether it's friends, club members, advertisers on TV, radio, or your favorite printed media, or members of the government and the very president of the United States, lies, half truths, gray areas are growing at a rapid rate. Spouses lie to their spouses, parents lie to their children, friends lie to friends, businesses lie to customers, we can't even trust government officials to tell the truth. Have we forgotten what truth, trust, and respect is and how important it is for a healthy society? Let's break it down:
What is a lie?
A lie is a falsehood, false witness against another, a fact that is not true. Many times it comes in the form of gossip, mean-spirited talk aimed to hurt a heart or harm a reputation, in many cases, it is a statement to cover up a wrongful deed. A lie serves to gain unjust fuel or momentum for selfish motives, a premeditated plan to achieve a goal that is not rightfully earned or deserved. A lie also, could be a sympathetic action to prevent hurting a heart or protecting someone, these are called "little white lies".
How do Lies effect us?
It has been a hard fast rule that trust and respect comes from being truthful. A child as a baby depends completely on it's parents for everything, food, comfort, clothes, and above all love. As the child grows and develops he/she begins to ask questions about everything. The parents' answers carry heavy weight in the child's mind. If a child discovers that it's parents have lied, she/he will begin to question the parents and the process begins of losing trust and respect for the parents. These children grow up and go out into society with little hope in their fellow man. If they can not trust their own parents to tell the truth, why would they trust anyone else?
Marriage and family life
A young couple meets and falls in love. Both were raised in families that didn't tell the truth...or even just one of the couple's parents were not always truthful and they had very little respect for their parents. There trust in each other is already flawed due to the trust factor. If their parents lied to them, surely their spouse will lie to them as well. Fear of betrayal, cautiousness, and jealousy find their way into their minds, along with self-doubt and a lack of confidence develops. These fears can remain throughout the relationship and reflect onto the children.
Business and the workforce
An employee works in a company that consistently tells them that their products are the best and that they should never tell customers otherwise. The company uses cheap materials, production is at lightning speed, and the quality is therefore poor. But employees are required to sell so many of them a week. Or a retail store offers a sales AFTER they jack up the prices to be more expensive than before and calls it a bargain. Employees know this is a lie, they are deceiving the customers, but they can't do anything about it. These employees tend to lose respect for their company and joy goes out the window, too.
Government and society
As the Federal government continues on it's path of lies and deception under corrupt policies and politicians, the people lose faith in their officials. They turn off the TV news, they don't listen to speeches, they turn a deaf ear to what is going on in the world around them. People have learned not to believe what is being told to them from the government. Lies, stealing, arm-twisting, backroom deals, and closed door bribery have dulled the people's trust, respect towards their government.
Rebuilding Trust
This is the hardest thing Anyone can do. It takes months, years, sometimes a lifetime. Trust is a commodity that is so necessary for security, respect, and charity, that without it, there is no hope, joy, and love. Love can't come without respect, respect can't come without trust, without love, there is no joy.
Building a relationship takes time, lots of time for the true merits of trust to be shown, rebuilding a relationship is so much harder...though it can be done.
Truth and action
We have got to get back to the basics of truth and respect. It must be expected in ourselves first and foremost. I tell my family, that the truth is top priority and nothing less than the truth will be expected in this house. We have to start somewhere. My father always told me, if you want to change the world, start in your own backyard. That's where we all need to start. Make it a hard rule, no lies, period.
If every household lived by the tenets of truth and respect, we wouldn't be in the position we are in right now. Well, here we are, but here we can go away from this position by starting in our own backyards by being truthful in all things. If you know you will have to lie about it later, don't do it. Walk away from temptation...no better yet, run away from temptation, it's not worth it.
I'm tired of the lies and deceit happening all around me, how about you?
1 comment:
What tangled webs we weave...
Trust is like an egg: once it's been broken, it's broken for good. You can't completely put it back together, no matter how much progress you make. Sadly, governments tend to be quite good at, er, coloring the truth to suit their interests. No wonder we're called upon by scripture to pray for our gov't officials! They probably tend to need it the most.
Post a Comment